


Oh, I Know That This Love Is Pain

by cecilia095



Category: New Girl
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Love Confessions, Multi, Post-Finale, Reunions, Season Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 10:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10409742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilia095/pseuds/cecilia095
Summary: "Fine. I call Jess. Jess is who I call when I have a shitty day, or when I'm confused, or when I have a question I'll never have the answer to. Jess. Jess tells me why my day will be better tomorrow, Jessunconfuses me, Jess gives me the answers. Happy?"SEASON SIX FINALE FIC.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So! I'm back and SUPER READY for the finale! I've obviously been reading people's speculations all over the internet which is how this little baby came to be. I kind of took everything I already guessed would happen in the finale and made it into something of my own. I hope my little vision is something you can kind of see happening, too. :')
> 
> P.S. Yes, I am a little rusty because I haven't written in a very long time. No, I am not sorry for bringing you this because I felt I needed to contribute *something*.
> 
> The title comes from "Let's Hurt Tonight" by OneRepublic, aka "The Song I'd Totally Pick For a End-of-the-Finale Montage". (Everything about it screams N/J to me.)
> 
> [Also, no real spoilers are anywhere in this fic. Just pure speculation and "I HOPE THIS SH*T HAPPENS!!!"'s.]

He calls her one more time before the party is over.

"Hey, me again. Um, I know I keep calling and calling, but this time I have a legitimate question. I mean, okay, all of the other times were definitely legitimate too, I just... - Do normal people spend close to three-hundred-dollars on raffle tickets? Is that a thing? Anyway. Um. I don't know why you aren't calling me back, Jess, but if you could answer my question about the -- the tickets, just... Okay. See ya, Jess."

—

He knows it's over when he isn't even concerned, or upset, or thinking about the dreaded Nick Miller Breakup Speech-Slash-Stuttering Mess that's definitely on its way.

He high fives Reagan when she tells him she'll take the job, and he almost wants to ask her when it starts. (And he hopes the answer is: 'soon'.) 

She leaves the room before he can ask her anything, and then he doesn't even wait for her to come back in before he goes to bed.

—

"Hey."

Cece's cutting up a banana on the ( _their_ , you moved out weeks ago, woman) countertop at like, ten in the morning.

"Hey, Person Who Does Not Live Here," Nick greets her, stealing chopped of pieces of her banana off of the cutting board and shoving them into his mouth.

"Cute," she says, scrunching her nose. "We stayed in Jess's room last night."

" _Why_? You have a  _home_."

"That  _home_ was making  _noise_."

"Like the loft doesn't? Remember that one time we thought the pipes in the bathroom were Winston's late night farts?"

Cece laughs at the memory and goes, "Eww, yeah."

"For real, what are you still doing here, and why are you stealing my bananas?"

"It's Winston's banana, and I was going through Jess's stuff," she says, setting down the knife she's holding onto the cutting board and smacking her lips together. "Shit."

"What do you mean, ' _you were going through Jess's stuff_ '?", he asks, his eyes squinted at her.

"Nick, if I tell you, you can't blow up her phone with weird voicemails, okay?"

"I can't promise that. I've left her like... eight of them since she's been gone."

"Shocking," Cece says, and she's getting _reaaal_  tired of the back and forth between these two. "Jess is moving out, Nick," she says in a huff, and then she watches Nick's heart drop into his stomach. The look on his face tells Cece everything she has to know -- or, you know,  _has known_ because she and Schmidt are _so_  smart.

"But  _why_?", is all he asks, and then he pulls his phone out from the pockets of his pajama pants.

"No, don't do that. Just let  _her_ call  _you_."

"I don't get it. First she fleas Los Angeles, now she's leaving the loft, too? Is it Winston? I mean, I know he used her closet to store some weirdly huge toys the other week but I thought Jess would've appreciated that."

Cece shakes her head 'no' over and over, and then she says, "I don't know, Nick. Why do  _you_ think Jess doesn't want to live here anymore?"

He furrows his brows for a long second, and then he jumps out of the stool at the kitchen counter. "Is this something I need to fix?"

"I mean, how oblivious  _are_ you?"

"VERY, AND YOU KNOW THIS!"

—

He recruits Aly to help him, but he wouldn't have done that if he knew how horrible she was at breaking up with somebody.

"I hope you never break up with Winston. It would kill  _me_ , and I wouldn't even be the one getting dumped by you."

"I mean, you don't even really give a damn about each other, Nick. What's her favorite color?"

"Uh..."

"What makes her sad?"

"Aly, what are you doing?"

"Nick, what are  _you_ doing?", she retorts, pointing her index finger at his chest and poking him. "You're oblivious. Reagan isn't who you want to tell all of your 'things' to, is she?"

"What 'things', I have no ' _things_ ', I am a poor writer-slash-bar owner-slash-my bank account is very small."

"Your things, Nick. You have a bad day, or you're confused, or you have a question that you can't figure out the answer to. Who do you call?"

He doesn't say anything, just thinks of the phone that's in his pocket, thinks of the call log that says Jess's name over and over and over and over again. No calls to Reagan, just one about: "Hey, you left your dirty socks on my bed after work." "Great, those are the cleanest things about your bed, Nick." "See ya." "Bye."

"Nick,  _who do you call_?", she asks one more time.

"J-Jess," he mumbles, and Aly lifts her eyebrows at him when he says Jess's name. "Fine. I call Jess. Jess is who I call when I have a shitty day, or when I'm confused -- Note: I am  _always_ confused, Aly, -- or when I have a question I'll never have the answer to. Jess. Jess tells me why my day will be better tomorrow, Jess  _un_ confuses me, Jess gives me the answers. Happy?"

"Happier than you and Jess, yeah," she says with a smirk. "Nick, just tell Reagan the truth. You're not her person, she's  _definitely_ not yours, and she'll start that job tomorrow and forget you and her were even a thing. Do it."

—

"How is everything back at home?"

"Fine, I think. How's your dad's not-broken toe?"

"Cece, that thing is  _crooked_. I'm nervous for him to even pee alone."

"You're making excuses. Does he know?", she asks.

Jess takes a breath, and then she says, "You mean, 'Does he know why I'm hiding out in Portland?'. Yeah, he knows."

"Can you just... come home?", Cece asks her, and she can almost picture Jess's heart breaking on the other end of the phone.

"Why, Ceec? So I can watch Nick and Reagan pretend they're happy for another however-many months? No. I'm not doing that to myself anymore."

"Actually, I was asking you because I don't want to take this damn pregnancy test without my best friend," she blurts out.

"Wait,  _pregnancy_ \-- Oh my God, Cece, do you think you're pregnant?!"

Cece sighs. "I don't know, but I think so. Schmidt has no idea yet, Aly and Nick have been roaming around the loft together all day, --"

"Wait,  _Aly and Nick_?"

"Yeah, it's a weird dynamic but it works."

"Cece, why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't know. Jess, I need you, and so does everyone else. I can't -- I can't pack up your room without getting  _super_ emotional, and that's not even from the maybe-pregnancy, that's just because I'm sad for you. Can you just come home, Jess? We can deal with everything else when you get here. _Please_."

—

He's an idiot. 

He follows Reagan to San Diego, and he doesn't tell her anything is wrong on the train ride over.

She doesn't ask why he hasn't packed an overnight bag, because she figures he'll probably just sleep in his flannel and his jeans tonight, and whatever. She never asks him why he's missing something, or if he's had enough to eat today, or packed him a snack bag -- Okay, well, Jess is obviously a different breed because she would've packed him _two_ snack bags: one for the train ride over, one for the train ride back.

"I am not who you go to for the  _things_ ," he starts, and Reagan inches forward in her seat and goes, "Excuse me?"

"I mean...", he clears his throat and tries again. "Reagan, you're -- Okay, you know what, I'm just gonna --"

"Break up with me?"

"Yeah, I... Wait. How did you know?"

"I've known since you high five-d me and yelled, "Dream job!" at me. You looked like you were about to poop your pants."

"I definitely felt a little gassy that night."

"You don't say," she says, laughing a little.

"Reagan." He closes his eyes and shakes his head. "You're not my person, okay? I don't go to you for things. I don't know anything about you! I mean, what's your favorite color?"

"Black."

"Who the hell picks ' _bla_ \-- Not the point." He folds his hands in his lap and just looks at her for a second, and she doesn't even look upset that it's over, or at him, or at all. She looks the same as she always does, and that right there tells Nick he's making the right decision. In his head, he even flashes back for a second to how Jess looked when they broke up three years ago. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying about it, her lips quivered in a way that made Nick want to immediately change his mind for a minute. Reagan looks like... well...  _Reagan_.

"Reagan, we don't talk about anything. You don't fix anything for me."

"Wait, like... furniture? You never asked!"

"No, like my  _feelings_. Ugh. I don't know. I guess I never asked you to fix those either."

"You never talk to me either, Nick. You  _just_ started talking to me about not talking to me. I mean, come on!"

"Because I didn't know I needed that, okay? I need to talk, I need to tell someone about my feelings, all of 'em, and I need to bake cakes and watch weird documentaries and do crafts on the dining room table until midnight."

Reagan narrows her eyes. "You mean, the things you do with  _Jess_?"

Nick catches himself too late, but then he nods. "Yeah, I guess the things I do with Jess."

—

Aly did the unthinkable and found Winston's dad on Facebook, and she messaged him some long thing about how his son deserves to know who he is, so this dude who looks like Old Winston is sitting in the living room of the loft having tea and cookies with Aly and Winston, and Furguson is in his lap.

"This place just gets crazier and crazier everyday," Schmidt says to his wife, blinking at everything in front of them.

"Should we go back home?", Cece asks, and Aly turns around with furrowed brows and whisper-yells, "Um, yeah, that would be nice!"

When Winston's dad leaves, Winston grabs Aly from out of the doorway and just squeezes her. It's as serious of a moment as they've ever had together, and Aly breaks it with a, "You smell that? He definitely farted when he left."

"I love you," Winston says sincerely, even though he's always sincere when he tells his future wife how much he loves her. He does. He loves every part of her, even the Facebook-stalking, dad-finding part.

"No, I do," he says when Aly laughs his 'I love you' off as if what she did for him wasn't some huge deal. "No one looks at me the way you look at me. No one laughs at the things I laugh at except for you. You're my best friend, Aly, and sometimes, -- sometimes I ask myself why the hell I get to have it all. Furguson  _and_ you."

"There we go, I was waiting for a Furg mention," she says, leaning in and smooching him on the chest. "Don't thank me for finding him. It's my way of paying you back for loving me even if I left a Japanese game show prize collection in your loft."

"It adds character," he says with a shrug, and then he kisses her hard on the mouth.

" _Awwww_..."

"I THOUGHT YOU TWO LEFT ALREADY, DAMMIT! ALY JUST TOOK HER BRA OFF!"

"Yeah, I know, she threw it on top of me!"

"Then move off our damn couch, Schmidt."

"I will never leave this place!"

—

Jess gets back from Portland in the morning.

No one is awake when she gets in, but she calls Cece and Schmidt at around nine and she can just  _tell_ they've been itching for an invitation to 4D all morning long.

They get to the loft in less than ten minutes, and when they do, Cece pulls Jess into her arms and goes, "Never leave again. You're not allowed."

"Oh, I'm still moving out. Is my room packed?"

"Some of it," Cece admits. "I'm sorry, I just couldn't do it without getting super upset. You don't need to move out, Jess, you just need to talk to Nick."

"Where has that gotten me, Cece? I end up giving him advice on his relationship and Reagan picks the lint. She. Picked. The. Lint."

"Did Nicholas not prepare his clothes before leaving the house? I told him, Grab n' Go from the dryer does not make for a good impression!"

"Shut up, Schmidt," Jess says, shaking her head. "I missed you, you nut."

"Come 'ere," he says, pulling Jess in for a hug. "I missed you too, you even-more-of-a-nut."

—

Nick comes out of his room an hour after Jess gets home.

"Rough night, Miller?", she asks, and she's mad at herself that that's the first thing she says to him.

"The roughest. I slept in this flannel."

"You always sleep in that flannel," she says, rolling her eyes. "Anyway, good to see you, hope everything's just... swell with Reagan, and... bye! I have to pack."

"Wait." He shakes his head and wakes up a bit, and then he looks at her hard for a few seconds. "You're not really leaving, are you?"

"I'm really leaving," she says, and she nods her head over to her bedroom door. "I'm just... I guess I outgrew this place."

Nick sighs, and he's too jumbled-up to stop her right now. "By the way, everything isn't swell with Reagan," he says before Jess can walk into her bedroom fully. "We're done. She took the train to Hog-warts and she's not coming back."

"I'm... sorry," she says, smacking her lips together. " _By the way_ ," she adds, mocking the way he said it to her a few seconds ago, "I'm moving out because of you, Nick."

"M-Me?"

She nods, and she takes a super deep breath before laying it all out on the table for him. She's been waiting to do this forever, and if he's not ready now, he never will be, and she just needs closure. "I'm so in love with you I can't  _think_ ," she tells him. "I love you, I love you, I love you, and that's why I can't be your substitute-girlfriend while your real-girlfriend sits around and doesn't do any of the real-girlfriend stuff with you. Okay? I love you, I have always loved you since the day we broke up, and the only way I can not love you is if you don't live across the damn hall from me anymore."

Nick doesn't say anything back.

—

Jess ignores the fact that Nick is home -- and the fact that she just blurted out her love for him to him in the middle of the hallway of their loft. Instead, she's cooped up in the stall in the bathroom with Cece, waiting for the results of three at-home pregnancy tests.

"Negative," Jess says, holding the stick up to Cece as if her urine isn't all over it. "Are you sure you're not just bloated and crampy?"

"I mean, I thought so," Cece tells her, and she takes this long breath as if she's disappointed, and then Jess tells her she didn't even know they were trying. "We weren't, and I know... I know what Sadie told me years ago. She told me if I wanted kids I'd have to start  _now_ , and it's not  _now_ anymore, and -- I guess I just thought I had a little bit of a chance left. What do the last two say?"

Jess forgets about all of her problems for a second; all of the Nick Miller Love she's not holding in anymore, the way he looked at her in the hallway when she told him, the way she so desperately just wants to throw her hands up and say, "THIS IS STUPID! JUST BE WITH ME!". She shakes her head and doesn't even hold the tests up to Cece, just inches in even closer and throws both arms around her. "I'm sorry, Ceec. I really want this for you guys too, but it's... they're negative."

—

Cece tells Schmidt everything, how she thought she was pregnant because her period is thirteen days late, how she bought five tests and used three and isn't even going to waste her time taking the other two, how they weren't  _trying_ but they weren't  _not trying_.

Schmidt just holds her in the middle of 4D, right in the middle of the living room where they got engaged over two years ago. "Shh. It's okay. That doesn't mean it won't happen, baby."

"I should've told you," she says, her head on his shoulder as he pulls her in closer. "I'm sorry."

Schmidt shushes her again, and then when she pulls away, he whips out his phone from the pocket of his khakis.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling the Va-genius."

" _Sadie_? Why? I'm not pregnant, babe."

"Maybe she can tell us if we have any baby-making left in us."

"Ugh. Whyyy. Just leave it alone. Let's adopt a cat."

"I can't," he protests, wrinkling his nose at the thought. "They like my nipples, remember?"

So Cece reluctantly lets her husband call Sadie, and she tells them to come in this afternoon, so whatever. She had no plans besides packing Jess's shit anyway, which she definitely wouldn't have done so easily.

—

Aly and Winston knock on Jess's door around five o'clock, and she waves them in.

"Ahem," Winston clears his throat, pulling a crumbled up piece of looseleaf paper from the pocket of his jeans. "Well... I wrote you a song, but now I'm singing it in my head and it's all jacked-up, so I'm just going to tell you this instead: I love you, Jess. You're the best person I know, even though you don't like giving my cat his butt pill when I ask. I'm really gonna miss living with you, even the way you ring that dumb ass bell when you pee to let us know you're going. You're always going to have a place in my heart, and I hope you rest in peace. Wait. Hold up, I just mixed up your moving out note with your eulogy. Please hold!"

Jess rolls her eyes but also feels herself start to cry, and then she goes, "If that's my eulogy, I love it, you weirdo."

Aly holds up her index finger. "Wait. I also have something to say. Nothing like my lovely fiancé just recited, but I do want you to know that you're amazing, and you're the only person who wears polka dots that I can actually stand, and also..., don't give up so easily. I know it feels crappy because you've been waiting for Nick to get his head out of his ass, but he knows, Jess. He knows who the person he loves is; he just really sucks at saying it."

"Hey, do  _I_ suck at saying things, babe?", Winston asks her.

"Uh, you just gave Jess the note you would've given her if she  _died_ , so kind of, but I love you endlessly anyway!", Aly says, clapping her hands together. "Jess, I'm serious. Don't pack up and run away without talking to him."

"But I  _did_ Aly," Jess says in between her own tears, sealing one of the three boxes labeled 'MITTENS' shut. "I told him exactly how I felt when I got home today and he just... stared at me and said nothing since. What am I supposed to do, beg for him?"

" _Niiick_." Aly curls her fingers into a fist and slams it into Jess's 'BOWS, BUTTON, ETCETERA' box. "Are you serious?!"

"I just want to finish packing and get out of here. I have a moving truck coming tonight and I'm not even halfway done with the 'SPRING SCARVES AND BROACHES' box."

"Ooh, I love that one!", Winston says, and Aly smacks him on the arm.

—

Jess is on her seventh-to-last box when she hears scrambling in the living room. She wants to freak out that they're being robbed, but then she remembers the moving truck is coming in two hours and she's barely made a dent in Box Number Forty One. 

She hears a dog (?) bark, a squeal, a grunt, and then someone definitely busts their ass on the floor.

"H-Hello?!" She opens her bedroom door and tiptoes out slowly, taking one of the lengthier scrapbooks that's sitting on her used-to-be craft table as a weapon. (Good one, Day.)

"Um. Cece, Schmidt? If this is you guys, I'm  _so_ sorry for breaking into your home using the doggy door, but  _please_ , please don't do this right now..."

"Jess." It's not Cece and Schmidt, and suddenly there's no dog barking anymore. Nick is hunched over, hands on his knees, panting and panting, and then he says her name again.

"What the  _hell_ , Miller?" She's (obviously) angry at him; she has every right to be. He stood there and did nothing when she did nothing but tell him how in love with him she is. 

"I know, I know, I'm an idiot."

"Yeah, well..." She rolls her eyes. "Hey, do you have a dog now or something?"

"What?" He looks behind him and then shakes his head. "No, I just super-jumped over the dog from 4B, I think. All good, we cool, we cool."

"What the hell were you running from?"

" _Me_? What the hell are  _you_ running from, Jess? You're the one who's just... packing up your life into boxes instead of talking to me."

"I  _did_ talk to you, Nick. You don't want to talk! You don't  _like_ to talk! What else was I supposed to do? I said: "I love you". You said: Nothing. Silence."

"Jess." He pockets his hands and takes a step forward. "I do like to talk. I like all of that stuff. I like -- I like bank accounts, and commitments, and  _The Captain_ wasn't  _that bad_ of a sex position."

She rolls her eyes and interrupts, "Oh yes it was."

"Yeah, it definitely was," he laughs, and then he catches his breath a little more. "I didn't do any of that stuff with Reagan, and all it did was make me realize how much I missed doing it with you."

Jess doesn't say anything, just smacks her lips together and sets down the scrapbook she's been holding defensively in her hands for the last five minutes.

"Everything you've ever done for me, everything you've ever given me, everything you've ever tried to fix about me... Jess, I want all of that."

She looks at him like she doesn't believe him, and then she says, "Then why didn't you say anything when I told you how I felt?"

"I don't know, but I'm saying it now." He looks into her open bedroom door and points at the boxes. "Is it too late? When are you --"

"The truck is coming in two hours," she says. "I can't just call them and tell them: "Never mind!""

"Well, I can," Nick says, and then he shrugs and pulls Jess's phone off of the coffee table, scrolling through a few of her contacts before, "Is it, "Moving Truck Guy", or should I keep looking?"

Jess laughs. "That's the one. What are you doing?"

"I'm not running anymore, Jess, and neither are you. No more hiding out in Portland, no packing up your entire life and no more "Moving Truck Guy". Who is he anyway? Is he taller than me?"

"Shut up, Nick."

"No, Jess," he says, and then he steps even closer to her.

"Okay, Nick."

"Okay, Jess." He's a little quieter now, and he inches into her so that their bodies are almost touching.

"What are you doing?"

"Jess, you're crazy if you think I don't want this more than you do. Door: Closed. Door actually: Open."

" _What_?"

"I -- I got nervous and choked, Jessica, I don't know." He raises a hand to her cheek and cups her face, and for the first time in a long time, he looks at her right in the eyes and tells her that he loves her. "You're my  _Things_ person. I go to you when things are good, when they're crappy, when I don't have a freakin' clue. You fix everything without even trying to, and I'm so sorry I didn't see that before. I was too busy thinking not talking was cool; not knowing anything about the person I was with was even cooler. Jess, I know almost everything about you, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life learning everything else I don't know. I promise you that."

Jess swallows thickly and pulls him into her. 

"You're never going to cry during  _Dirty Dancing_ again, and I'm -- I'm gonna get a bank account, a  _real_ bank account --"

"You don't have a real bank account by now, Nick? You own a bar!"

"Not the point."

"Then get to the point."

He shrugs and kisses her, both of his hands on her face, his body meshing with hers. "No point. Just wanted to do that. I love you, Jess."

"AND I LOVE THIS  _DAY_!"

"What the --"

Schmidt steps through the door and waves a hand at Jess and Nick like it's no big deal they're doing this in the middle of the doorway. "Sorry to interrupt whatever  _this_ little shenanigan is, but --"

"Hold on, are you two... like...  _for real_?!" Cece squeals.

"I've seen them kiss before. Shalom; so happy for you two; please let me give a toast at the wedding; Jessica, those shoes don't match your blouse."

"Hold on, are you two like... FOR. REAL.?"

"Cecelia,  _the news_!" Schmidt yells over everything, setting a hand onto his wife's back.

"Wait, what news?" Nick asks, pulling away from Jess's hold but still finding her hand in his.

"I'm pregnant," Cece says quickly.

"I'm pregnant," Schmidt says at the same time as her.

Jess and Nick immediately grab Cece and squeeze her, Jess chanting a bunch of incoherent things, one of them being, "I CALL GODMOTHER!", and then they turn over to Schmidt and look at him funny. 

"What? I'm fifty-percent responsible for that thing," he says, pointing to Cece's middle.

"Yeah, okay..."

"I believe you, buddy."

"I knew I could count on you, Nicholas. Do I have your blessing?"

"My blessing, man? You don't need my blessing to knock someone up, Big Guy."

"Okay, but do I have it?"

"Yeah, I mean... yeah."

—

They end the night on the rooftop. Jess's room is still in boxes -- (well, forty-one forty-sevenths of her room is in boxes), but she doesn't care that her craft table is completely torn apart right now. Her body is in Nick's lap, and she feels each kiss he leaves on the back of her neck tingle.

Aly and Winston join them after their shift is over, and now it's past midnight. 

"We didn't forget the bubbly!", Aly says, holding up a bottle of the same six-dollar champagne Jess buys from the liquor store.

"None for you though," Winston says, nodding in Cece's direction. "My godson can't come out funky 'cus of a glass of this stuff."

"Never said it was a 'he', never said you were the godfather. We have  _options_ , you buffoon. I'm thinking of asking Robby."

"Ew, Schmidt,  _no_ ," Jess interjects. "I'm not god-parenting your unborn kid with my cousin. No. Make it Nick or Winston and face the fact that you don't have any other male friends."

" _Fine_ , but someone has to break the news to Robby in the mass email I sent out before."

"Not it!", Jess and Nick both say at the same time, raising their hands to their noses to 'shotty not' like twelve-year-olds would.

"So how did you get pregnant anyway?", Winston asks in Cece and Schmidt's direction, and they both look at him with widened eyes. "No, like, I know how you made the kid, I just thought Cece's box was no bueño."

"My wife's ' _box_ ' is plenty bueño, you moron!"

"I don't know. Every test I took told me negative, but there's definitely a kid in there," Cece says with a shrug. "We made Sadie check like, four-hundred times."

"And you two," Aly says with a laugh, grabbing two glasses of champagne and stretching over Winston to pass them to Jess and Nick, "how the hell did this happen in... seven hours?"

Nick shrugs and looks down at Jess. "I think it probably should've happened seven years ago, but... whatever. It happened."

" _So_ romantic," Aly says teasingly. "God, and you're a writer  _how_?"

"Oh, I'm not romantic? Aly, you told me you'd breakup with someone by sending them a text message that said nothing besides: "GOT HIT BY BUS. S-R-Y". That's brutal!"

"Well."

Schmidt looks at everyone for a second and pauses, taking a knife to his glass and clinking it. "To... well... all of you knuckleheads. Each day we get crazier, but I love all of you sons of bitches more and more everyday."

"Hey, I know this is a really happy moment, but if Nick and Jess are going to be sharing a room again, can we  _please_ talk about Furguson getting his own now?"

"No."

"Definitely not, man."

"He's  _fine_ in ours."

"I WILL  _NOT_ STAND FOR THIS."

"YOU DON'T EVEN LIVE HERE!"

"I'LL MOVE BACK IN IF YOU MOVE THAT CAT INTO JESS'S ROOM!"

"HONEY, WE'RE HAVING A BABY, WE'RE NOT MOVING BACK INTO THE DAMN LOFT!"

"LET ME LIVE, ALL OF YOU!"

Nick turns to Jess in the midst of all of this and gives her a look.

"What?", she asks, laughing at the way he's staring at her.

"Welcome home, honey. You can still run for the hills, y'know. Your room's still in boxes."

Jess smirks, and then she shakes her head and loops an arm around Nick's neck. "Like you said, I'm already home."

 


End file.
